


I'll Be Home for Christmas

by PostcardsfromTheoryland



Series: December Fic Prompts [10]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Christmas, Families of Choice, Gen, Team as Family, Vomiting, Whump, internal bleeding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:41:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28067202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PostcardsfromTheoryland/pseuds/PostcardsfromTheoryland
Summary: It's the first Christmas after the war has officially ended, and Keith just wants to get home from his mission in time to celebrate. Only he's kind of injured. Actually, he's really injured.
Series: December Fic Prompts [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037385
Comments: 9
Kudos: 58





	I'll Be Home for Christmas

When Keith had made the choice to bypass the closest Coalition ally in favor of just getting back to the Atlas as quickly as possible, it had seemed like a perfectly rational decision. It was Christmas – the first Christmas after the war had officially ended. And of course there were still pockets of resistance, still druids holding out and Imperial Loyalists lurking in the shadows and still smaller, local fights breaking out, but this was the first Christmas they could all really relax and actually enjoy the holiday. Hunk had planned out a seven-course menu, Lance had made individual stockings for everyone, Matt and Pidge had taken over half of the Atlas’s power grid to rig up Christmas lights, and Shiro had manipulated several different schedules to ensure they’d be docked on Trellan for the week, which was basically a winter wonderland planet. Even the Alteans had gotten in on the holiday spirit, incorporating some of the less lethal traditions for their own winter holiday into the mix.

So yeah, Keith was a little banged up but he was late as it was, thanks to the attempted coup he’d just had to thwart, and the selfish part of him just wanted to get home in time for Christmas. If “home” happened to be a giant, semi-sentient spaceship, well, he’d just accepted that his life was weird by this point.

The thing was, though, Keith had made that decision when he’d just left the peace talks riding an adrenaline high and a sense of accomplishment, having successfully brokered peace between five different planets in the Xeli System, two of which had been former Galra colonies, and then dispatched the Loyalist assassin who had been trying to kill him and the planetary leaders. Everything had been good when he’d gotten back into his cruiser, content in the knowledge that the System should be able to handle things on their own now, and if he hurried he’d get back to Atlas in time for dinner.

He was realizing now that he might have made a mistake.

The assassin had gotten in a few good hits to Keith’s chest and stomach with his weird club-mace-thing, and what he’d thought was bruises and possibly a cracked rib was starting to feel a bit more like internal bleeding. As the adrenaline ebbed away, he started feeling sick and shaky in its absence, and not just in the normal adrenaline crash sort of way. His vision was getting blurry and breathing was difficult and nausea was crawling up his throat.

It was maybe time to admit defeat. Keith’s hand hovered over the comms, planning to contact the Atlas and ask for a wormhole back. The sooner he could get into the infirmary, the sooner he could get out and maybe at least track down some Christmas dinner leftovers.

But then his fuzzy brain pulled up a memory, one of Pidge jokingly telling him not to get into any trouble because the Atlas’s teladuv was going to be down for maintenance.

Fuck.

Kosmo whined at him from his place at Keith’s side. Too bad he couldn’t just teleport them back to the Atlas. His range kept increasing, but there was no way they could teleport to the Atlas while they were still so far out.

Keith could still call and ask for an extraction, even if the teladuv was down. The Atlas could get to his position in about a varga or so, if Keith’s math was correct. But he didn’t want to interrupt what was essentially a vacation, not just for the Voltron team but for the rest of the Atlas’s crew, as well. He could probably make it back on his own before passing out.

Maybe.

Kosmo just growled and nudged Keith’s hand into the comms himself. Guess that was that.

It was a surprise to see Shiro appear on the comms screen – Keith had been expecting him to already be off with the others, but he had to admit this was a better option than talking to someone like Iverson or, God forbid Slav.

“Keith,” Shiro said, immediately alert. “What’s wrong?”

“Think I messed up,” Keith managed, and God, just talking was a struggle.

“What’s wrong?” Shiro asked again.

Keith tried to answer, but he was suddenly overcome with a harsh wave of nausea, and before he knew what was happening, he was throwing up blood onto the floor of the cruiser.

Definitely internal bleeding. Maybe a punctured lung on top of it. Great job, Keith.

“Get me his location,” Shiro said, and it took longer than it should have for Keith to realize that Shiro wasn’t talking to him. There was more talking after that, none of it directed at Keith, so he let himself slump against Kosmo. For now the cruiser was on autopilot, but he knew in about ten dobashes there was a giant asteroid field he’d need to manually pilot through, and he was _not_ looking forward to that.

Not for the first time, Keith wished the Lions were still here. Black could have come and fetched him and then piloted them through the asteroid belt on their own, or better yet just teleported back to the Atlas. But the Lions were gone, sacrificed to save reality, and while it had been necessary, it also took some getting used to, to no longer be mentally connected to a super-powerful warship that could get him out of trouble.

“Keith?” Shiro’s voice broke through his thoughts, and he struggled to sit up and pay attention. When had he closed his eyes? “Sam thinks he can power the teladuv through the maintenance cycle enough for the jump in about fifteen dobashes, but the wormhole will be too small for the Altas to come get you. You’ll need to pilot. Can you do that?”

Keith tried to hum an affirmative response, not trusting that he wouldn’t throw up again if he opened his mouth. In all honestly no, he wasn’t sure he’d still be conscious enough in five dobashes to pilot, let alone fifteen, but he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter, did he?

“We’ve got your coordinates. Disengage the autopilot and thrusters for now. We’re going to get the wormhole basically right in front of you, so you don’t need to worry about those asteroids, ok? Do you have anything for first aid?”

Keith just shook his head. Nothing for internal bleeding, at any rate. The pain relievers would just make it that much more difficult to stay awake, and the antiemetic wouldn’t really help in a coughing-up-blood scenario.

“Ok,” Shiro said, still using his ‘I’m in control of the situation and everything will be fine’ voice which was nice. Made it feel less like Keith had royally screwed up. “You’ll be alright. I’m staying on the line with you until Sam gets the wormhole up.” A pause. “Ok, actually Matt, Pidge, Coran, Allura, and Hunk are all helping with the teladuv. Might be less than fifteen dobashes, then. Remind me to talk to Kolivan about no more solo Blade of Marmora missions.”

Keith was never going to remember that. He was sort of cold, now. Probably the shock. That didn’t bode well.

“Hey, stay awake,” Shiro said, but it was a losing battle. Now that Keith had realized how injured he actually was, he wanted nothing more than to curl up and pass out. Despite Shiro’s prodding, he was mostly out when he was suddenly dumped back into awareness when “Jingle Bells” started playing loudly through the comms. He squinted blearily at the screen to see Lance and Veronica there now with Shiro, and Lance’s ipod hooked up to the Atlas’s communications board.

“Figured I was useless when it came to the teladuv, but no one can sleep through the annoyance that is ‘Cascabel,’” Lance joked, though even from here Keith could see that he looked stressed. “I’ve got ‘Feliz Navidad,’ too, if you want it.”

“Keith,” Allura’s face popped up in a second screen, a frantic Hunk and Coran visible behind her. “We’re about to try it now. Get ready.”

“That’s a lot shorter than fifteen dobashes,” Keith slurred, grateful that they’d managed to speed up the timeline.

“It’s not,” Allura said. “It’s actually about 25. You’ve been unconscious.”

Oh. Whoops.

There was a bright flash in front of him as the wormhole sparked into existence, and Keith nudged the cruiser forward while trying not to look to closely at it. His grip on the controls was weak, and the only reason he was still upright was that Kosmo was bracing his side. He lost the comms in the wormhole, and the spinning swirls were not doing the dizziness any favors. He had to eventually shut his eyes and trust his muscle memory to make sure he didn’t accidentally veer off through the walls and end up god-knows-where.

It was a relatively short distance, as wormholes go, so it was only a few more seconds before they were deposited on the other side, the Atlas hovering in orbit around Trennan before them. Two of the MFEs were already there, waiting to tow his cruiser into the hangar, but now they were close enough for Kosmo to decide that enough was enough. Before they’d even gotten the tow cables attached, he’d teleported them directly into the medbay. Keith was conscious just long enough to hear one of the doctors gasp in surprise at their sudden arrival before he was falling face-first into soft, fuzzy darkness.

Most of the lights were off when he came around, but there were familiar murmured voices around his bed, so he figured it probably wasn’t overly late.

“Is it still Christmas?” Keith mumbled. “Wanted to make it in time.”

“You’re an idiot,” Pidge said. “But yes. You’ve got ten minutes left of Christmas Day.”

“Use them wisely,” Lance added.

They hadn’t been able to replicate the healing technology of the cryopods, and instead used a mix of Altean, Galran, and Olkari tech that could heal most injuries fairly quickly. Still, given the general soreness and achiness, Keith guessed he probably wasn’t getting out of bed any time soon.

“Dinner’s going to keep until tomorrow,” Hunk said, as if he’d read Keith’s mind. “Actually the salad will be better for it anyway, I hadn’t originally budgeted enough time to let it set.”

“You know you could have stayed in Xeli if you were injured,” Shiro said, a hint of reproach in his voice. “We could have waited to celebrate.”

“Didn’t think it was that bad,” Keith said, already starting to fall back asleep. “Wasn’t until I was piloting for a while that I realized it was worse than a couple bruises, and by then it didn’t make sense to turn back.”

“Still,” Shiro started, only to be cut off by Lance.

“Aw leave him alone, Shiro, it’s Christmas for another ten minutes. You can yell at him tomorrow. Look, we even moved one of the trees into the infirmary for you.” And sure enough, when Keith blearily cracked one eye open he could see one of the shorter trees sitting on the bedside table, lights and ornaments and everything.

“I wanted to cover it in fireflies,” Allura admitted, “but apparently that isn’t traditional on Earth.”

“I keep telling you,” Hunk said, “you’d never get any fireflies to stay in one place for that long.”

It was apparently a discussion they’d had multiple times, since it quickly devolved into a hushed argument, but that was ok. It wasn’t quite the Christmas Keith had been looking forward to earlier that day, but at least he could fall asleep with the light of the little Christmas tree next to him and his family all around him.


End file.
